Love And War

Two thousand years ago our word for love was the same. women and men wrote their songs of love the intimacies of inside and they spoke of how love was tireless love was a fantasy feast love was no disease love was no evil goddess love was a harshness, in the parting love was ‘the thing that made a girl’s bangles slip loose when her lord went away grow tight when her lord returned’ love was (they sang) ‘bigger than the earth higher than the sky unfathomable than the waters.’ love was. no names were named. you did not know who he was or who she was or when it was or where it was only love was. and there were the poems of war, the war poetry poems on the outside (and perhaps because the bards wore lotuses of gold) there are the poems where the names were named where the kings were praised where a bard addressed another where the guide sang to the patron where the poet sang to the courtesan where mothers spoke of tigers in their wombs where the kingdom was ‘an unfailing harvest of victorious wars’ where the old women ‘threatened to slash their breasts if their sons died in battle with backs turned in fright’ where the end spoke of ‘the blood glowing in the red center of the battlefield like the sky before nightfall’ and because it has an end war was a history. love never has an end. love was. and will be.